fer to call the Mrs. Lydia G. Perkins House, because it was built as agift to Moses’s wife, Lydia — for a few weeks over two summers, theybought it in 2006 and began the laborious process of bringing it up todate and giving it another 150-year lease on life. “We were not going tobe afraid to be contemporary,” says the husband, who grew up in Maine,“but we wanted to be empathetic to the historic nature of the house.”Searching online for a Maine architect, he was drawn to the work ofElliott + Elliott Architecture, an eight-person firm in Blue Hill knownfor designing clean, contemporary spaces for both historic and newhouses. Matt and Libby Elliott are the husband-and-wife principals ofthe firm. Associates Corey Papadopoli and JT Loomis led the Castinerenovation, Papadopoli as the project architect for the design phaseof the renovation, Loomis as overseer of construction.

“Designing houses that look as though they had always been there
doesn’t interest me,” says Papadopoli, “but taking something and see-

the interiors have a minimal contemporary aesthetic. A traditional table
painted gray (top left) is offset with Louis Ghost Chairs in a room that now
overlooks the rear terrace through a zinc-wrapped window bay. In the living
room (top right), black-and-white photographs add a graphic element. Two
staircases (above left), one to the basement and one to the second-floor
gallery, are hidden behind the pantry wall of the new kitchen. A window bay
(above right) brings natural light to the clean-lined new dining room.